Brian Grazer is the producer who won an Academy Award for Best Picture for the movie A Beautiful Mind. The research he did for that movie continued afterward, and led to him writing the #1 NY Times bestseller, A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life. Grazer encourages all of us to change our social interactions for the better through what he calls a “curiosity conversation.” The point of a curiosity conversation is to understand the other person’s perspective. That doesn’t mean you agree with it, but that you are open to trying to understand it. Doing that requires not telling the other person how wrong they are.
Julia Dahr, of Boston Consulting Group, calls these “constructive conversations,” and we can all see that the popular method of trying to shout each other down is certainly not constructive. She says the goal of our conversations should not be victory, but progress.
What would happen across social media, gathering places, and living rooms, if instead of “That’s crazy,” we said, “I’ve never thought of it that way. Can you describe it in a way that helps me understand your point of view?” I’ll make a prediction: We would have a much less angry nation, and instead of dismissing me people would see that I care and would be more open to considering my point of view.
Thoughts Along the Way 